Is Facebook a distraction in the classroom?

As a professor, especially in a large lecture class, you never know what your students are really doing on their laptops. How many are listening to the lecture and how many are chatting with friends on Facebook? This circumstance has led some professors to ban Facebook altogether from their classrooms. But I have found Facebook to be an engagement tool in my online classes. Read a recent interview with me in the Commonwealth Times on how I make Facebook work for my classes.